A person should be judged by his actions rather than his words. The record of Obama speaks for itself. He passed a stimulus bill that had no effect on unemployment. He passed a health bill that was a gift to the insurance industry. Guantanamo Bay is still open. Two wars are still raging. He bailed out Wall Street. He has turned his back on his constituents. The question now is whether Obama will continue his agenda unabated. Since the Congress is on the take and the public is asleep then I’m sorry to say the answer is yes.

Jerry Fair

Huntington Beach

The real problems

The biggest problem facing America today is partisan politicking. Every day in the letters section of your paper there is someone laying the blame for all of the state and national problems on either the Democrats or Republicans. Is it even possible that it is the Democrats’ fault for everything bad that happens in our economic and political spheres? Or the Republicans, for that matter? As soon as I see a letter calling out one group or the other as “the problem,” I see a voter whose right to vote should be revoked.

Do your homework Americans! Hundreds of thousands have died for your right to vote and surf the Internet anytime you want, among other things. Take each issue, each public seat of office, individually. Measure the opponents on their words and deeds. The politics of blame is also the politics of eschewing responsibility. If I can blame the Republicans for everything it automatically means I’m not part of the problem if I’m not part of the party. Anyone who thinks like this … you are the problem.

Thomas Lind

Long Beach

Just take a walk

Regarding your editorial on “Bad advice to keep trim.” Most of us don’t have a fishing hole with an abundant amount of edible fish nearby that we can bicycle to, but we do have two legs. With the exception of people plagued by illness or conditions related to old age that restrict their activities, most of us can walk out the front door and keep walking for an hour. It’s doesn’t cost anything and Lord knows we have the weather for it.

It’s a matter of choices and we can choose to take part in our own health and well-being or we can sit around and bemoan the fact that we’re putting on weight. Try doing something for an hour a day, whether it’s walking, bicycling or whatever. You’ll be glad you did.

Shirley Mackie Brief

Long Beach

Blame anyone but Dems

Regarding the leftist column “Will the grown ups in the tea party step up?” I see that leftist Eugene Richardson is displaying the fact that he’s not firing on all cylinders. He denounces the Tea Baggers using metaphors and yet he immediately tries to demonize Sarah Palin by calling her an Eva Peron. What hypocrisy! He is an example of statism and is a fine example of wasting paper and ink on his type of drivel.

Pat Killmer

Long Beach

It’s all right to have dissent as long as it is not directed at the Dems. If you don’t agree with the administration, you are either a lunatic, redneck member of the Tea Party movement or a racist. Case in point is the article by Eugene Robinson (Comment, March 28). Extra security for Dem leaders, a coffin left on Rep. Caranhan’s lawn. All the doings of right-wing extremists of the Tea Party movement or Sarah Palin.

It’s interesting to me that with literally dozens of microphones held by the press at the demonstration against health care no one but the Dems heard anything threatening or racist. The coffin was left near Rep. Caranhan’s home and not on his lawn. It was left by a group supporting anti-abortion legislation as part of the health care bill not the Tea Party members, but who cares about facts when the point is to marginalize groups apposed to the government’s trillion-dollar health care bill?

Ronald Howard

Long Beach

Looking for oil

Why is Signal Hill Petroleum pulling this same geophysical survey again after the disaster last time they did it a few years ago and homeowner complaints halted it?

It was already established that Petroleum is looking for oil, not earthquake faults. Their trucks stomping the ground caused damage to homes that resulted in lawsuits last time. Worst of all, the city of Long Beach that is always screaming about lack of money has enough for the Long Beach Police Department to follow Petroleum’s trucks around. Taxpayer money being used in an economic downturn to help a private oil company that should be able to pay for its own security escorts? There is something very wrong about this. Long Beach officials and Signal Hill Petroleum have a lot of explaining to do like they did last time when this survey turned out to be a big dud.

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Recently there have been a couple of articles concerning efforts to carve out better bicycle pathways through the South Bay cities. I was glad to see that progress was being made and that serious study was to follow.

If these pathways lead to places of work, it could help us all by reducing the amount of car traffic.

Today I drove through the beach cities and discovered that Hermosa Beach had already taken some action on this topic. Hermosa has opened up the full right lane of Hermosa Avenue to bicycle traffic.

I commend the city for finding a way and a location where it could encourage more bicycle use.

And I hope that this sharing approach on Hermosa Avenue works when the summer beach traffic arrives.

Unfortunately, on my drive I witnessed some bad cyclist behavior.

Several bicyclists in a group were driving through stop signs and, by the way, red lights over and over as if they did not apply. It reminded me that I see this near my house on the weekends: groups of cyclists that ignore the stop sign at the corner.

In fact, I cannot remember the last time I saw a cyclist stop for that traffic sign or any other that was not at a major cross street. It was rather ironic that on this day, while the cyclists ran the red light at Pier and Hermosa avenues, there was a portable electric city sign on the median that proclaimed that the city enforces bicycle laws. Was this meant for motorists alone?

I hope not. We should all obey the rules of the road.

– Wayne Widner, San Pedro

Don’t sacrifice tech for `green’

In her guest editorial on March 23 (“The United States needs a green New Deal”), Marcy Winograd berates the aerospace industry and its workers for “designing drones that sometimes miss their terrorist target, accidentally bombing innocent brides and grooms in Afghanistan.”

She wants to cancel our war on terror and decimate the aerospace industry because “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that war and occupation multiply our enemies.”

Winograd’s bewildering arguments seem to imply that if we walk away the terrorists will too.

Many of her reasons are economic and environmental. She cites a University of Massachusetts study that says twice as many jobs are created per given dollar in mass transit than in military contracting. I doubt most well-paid aerospace workers would find much solace choosing from twice as many lower-paying jobs.

One day after Winograd’s article appeared, the Daily Breeze reported, “The Quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast said that despite the state’s universities, research labs and high-tech industries, there is no indication that renewable energy or other `green’ positions will be strong enough to drive California’s unemployment rate down to single digits.”

We already have efforts under way to create green-job clusters and incubators. A green-job industry has been slow to form here, or anywhere else, as demand and technology develops. It’s been reported that Congress has allocated billions of dollars for green jobs, but only dozens have been created nationwide.

Nothing compared to the tens of thousands of high-wage aerospace jobs that already exist in our region.

We need a sustained effort in attracting and growing the future green-job sector. It makes no sense to destroy our existing high-tech economic engine in the hopes of creating a new one. Let’s have both.

– John Parsons, Redondo Beach

Bill would outlaw `hired guns’

At this very moment, more than 22,000 mercenaries are operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These unaccountable hired guns have shot civilians and participated in torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities.

The Stop Outsourcing Security Act, introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, would prohibit hiring private mercenaries like Blackwater to perform tasks traditionally done by the military.

Blackwater is the poster child for everything that’s wrong with military contractors: They’ve killed civilians, they’ve stolen weapons, they’ve billed the U.S. government for a prostitute, and they’ve changed their name multiple times so they can keep getting contracts.

I find this outrageous and completely against the ideals upon which our country was founded.

The Stop Outsourcing Security Act will prevent these hired killers from pursuing their “business practices” on behalf of the United States and its citizens.

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If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.